Mall: rated R

Published: April 29, 2005

Parents who want to drop off kids aged 15 or younger at the Pheasant Lane Mall on Friday or Saturday nights are out of luck.
In response to recent “disorderly and disruptive” incidents, mall security personnel two weeks ago started distributing fliers outlining the mall’s “general code of conduct,” according to mall Manager Ginny Szymanski.
The code outlines 13 rules - including some involving appropriate attire - that must be followed while at the mall. From 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturdays, mall security personnel now stand outside two mall entrances to make sure that anyone under 16 has a parent or someone over 21 with them.
“That’s when we approach them and give them a copy of the code of conduct and ask the parent to come in with them,” Szymanski said.
If the parent cannot accompany the teen on Friday or Saturday nights, they are asked to take the youngster home, Szymanski said.
“A large number of people said, ‘OK, fine,’ and they parked their vehicle,” she said.
Billie Scott, director of mall public relations for Simon Property Group, which owns the Pheasant Lane Mall, said it is not the only mall with a code of conduct.
“We do encourage at all of our malls that people not use the mall as a so-called baby-sitting service,” Scott said.
Szymanski said the mall rules have always been in place and posted, but the fliers were printed two weeks ago in response to the large groups of teenagers who have been hanging out - not shopping - at the mall on Friday and Saturday nights.
“They’re meeting their friends and all of a sudden what starts as a group of two or three becomes a group of five or 20, and that becomes intimidating for a family, a baby carriage, to see the numbers together,” she said.

This article appears in the April 29 2005 issue of New Hampshire Business Review